The project that initially emerged from Autodesk and became MapGuide Open Source just released its version 2.4.

I haven't found a summary of the changes so far. There seems to be numerous improvements to MapGuide OS's core, to Fusion Tools and FDO. Here's what looks like their list of major new items:

• A new service for profiling performance (RFC 110)
• Web Tier directories now include SVN metadata, allowing for the pulling of viewer updates and fixes instantly with a subversion client (RFC 111)
• Path scaling support in Symbol Definitions (RFC 113)
• New Feature Service API for save points RFC 114
• Improved Coordinate System conversion performance (RFC 116)
• IPv6 support (RFC 118)
• Support for enhanced URL information in Layer Definitions (RFC 119)
• Configurable Coordinate System dictonary paths via serverconfig.ini and webconfig.ini (RFC 122)
• Feature Join performance optimizations (RFC 123 and  
• Toggle-able tooltips for AJAX and Fusion viewers (RFC 120)
• Lots of performance and usability improvements in Fusion (see  this link for an overview)
• Datum Transformation enhancements (RFC 94)
• WMS 1.3.0 support (RFC 95)
• QuickPlot? command for AJAX and Fusion viewers (RFC 96)
• EPSG/SRID code changes (RFC 98)
• WFS 1.1.0 support (RFC 106)
• Watermark support (RFC 108)

My main question when MapGuide Open Source comes to my mind: what's the status of its adoption? I had a lot of hopes for it when Autodesk made MapGuide open source along with providing the financial support for OSGeo's birth, but it seems like MapGuide does not get much love nowadays, at least not as much as competing solutions like GeoServer and MapServer. Any comments?

Newest version of the OpenGeo Suite has just been released and it comes with the following goodies.

• Server-side processing
  • OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) provides a standard for inputs and outputs (requests and responses) for geospatial processing services such as polygon overlays, buffers, or custom processes.
  • Rendering transformations make processing operations easier in browser-based visualizations by enabling just-in-time use of any WPS process as part of any layer’s style.
  • Server-side scripting in Python and JavaScript allows users to easily deploy their own server-side processes using concise and straightforward APIs.
  • PostGIS 2.0 brings vector and raster analysis into the database.
• GeoServer security now supports user groups as well as a number of new authentication mechanisms including LDAP, digest and X.509 certificate authentication.
• Virtual services allow GeoServer to support multi-tenancy, enabling a single GeoServer instance to publish multiple service endpoints.
• A new caching configuration interface in GeoServer includes the ability to define new grid sets, specify which layers to cache, seed or truncate the cache, and more.
• OGC Web Feature Service 2.0 (WFS) adds some interesting new capabilities, including paging, stored queries, and extended operators.
• Upgraded components, including the adoption of GeoServer 2.2, PostGIS 2.0, and GeoWebCache 1.3

Almost a week ago, one of the most popular web mapping server engine has been updated, GeoServer 2.2 has been released. As they wrote: "The release of a new major version update is a big deal (the last one was over 16 months ago) [...]", here's some of the highlights, follow to link to get the full overview!

• NTv2 and NADCon Support allows for datum transformations with cm level precision
• Continued work for supporting high accuracy datum transformations
• A new reprojection console
• The image collection coverage store allows users to serve un-referenced data through WMS using image/pixel space as the coordinate system
• Support for WFS 2.0 adds some interesting new capabilities to the WFS protocol
• Support for additional dimensions brings time and elevation support to both vector and raster data. And, with support for time, comes support for animation in WMS.
• A GeoWebCache configuration GUI is now available directly from within the GeoServer web admin interface

And much much more...

A new version of Geopaparazzi is out in the market: 3.2.0 (or at least it should be soon, lately google play takes some time to get in sync)

The list of news is quite nice:

• huge enhancement of forms with support for multiple tabs, fragments for tablets, images and map screenshots, date widgets...
• integration of forms with kmz export
• style enhancements on kmz export
• send simple notes and bookmarks info via sms
• geocoding via google services
• osm routing via openrouteservice
• measure tool is back
• opening of geoSMS by geopaparazzi in offline mode
• editing mode for geonotes with forms
• support for rendering themes through style maps for offline maps
• battery level visible in map mode
• gps connection status visible in map mode

Read more about it here.

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / data front:

• MapBrief claim that the battle for open source in the enterprise in behind us, from the WSJ: "[...] for reasons including ease of innovation and cutting the time to get products to market"
• Interesting, announcing QMap: A simple data collection application using QGIS
• Unless I'm mistaken, we haven't mentioned yet the new 'shp.js' open source javascript Shapefile parser (via GGD)
• In case you missed it in our PR section, there's an Education version of gvSIG
• GeoTools 8.1 has been released, mostly a bug fix release
• Portable GIS version 3 has been released too
• Here's a summary of State of the Map held in Tokyo
• It's done, OpenStreetMap data license is now ODbL
• And yes, some crazy people try to sell open source geospatial code

From the Esri front:

• Here's What’s New in ArcGIS Online for September

From the Microsoft front:

• New imagery to Bing Maps, a lot of it, Global Ortho & 17 Million SqKm of New Satellite Imagery

From the Google front:

• Plenty of geoblogs mentioned the Atlantic article on the secretive Ground Truth program in an article named How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything
• Google shares a breakout of Google Maps search terms by country for this Summer
• They also have an entry on the need to save the elephants and how to do it the geospatial way
• You can also Explore the Forefront of Japanese Space Science with Google Maps
• Here's the official entry on the latest imagery update in Google Maps and Google Earth, a lot of it
• The GEB shares an entry on Viewing city lights in Google Earth and why not, another entry on Google Earth Fractals

Interesting Directions Mag articles:

• Does Your Local Government Need A Drone?
• New Spatial Information Act for Australia
• Trucking Fleets Leverage Traffic Data to Work Smarter, Cut Costs
• New Resources for GIS Job Seekers

In the miscellaneous category:

• The SPOT 6 satellite is alive and well with its first images, it was successfully launched on September 9 and has a spatial resolution of 1.5m
• LizardTech (MrSID) Releases Express Server 8

In the maps category:

• Via APB, here's a Map the World’s Friendships from Facebook and Stamen
• Here's a gigantic 3D map of the deaths in Grand Canyon
• NASA wants you to help map an asteroid

I had to investigate OGC's WCS standard and in the process I learned about Rasdaman, a geospatial radar data manager software which is apparently the only software that currently support WCS 2.0 both as a server and client. Rasdaman exists both in a commercial 'rasdaman enterprise' version and as open source with the 'rasdaman community' version. We never really mentioned rasdaman before.

The rasdaman community introduction: "Rasdaman extends standard relational database systems with the ability to store and retrieve multi-dimensional raster data ( arrays) of unlimited size through an  SQL-style query language. On such sensor, image, or statistics data appearing, e.g., in earth, space, and life science applications rasdaman allows to quickly set up array-intensive services which are distinguished by their flexibility, speed, and scalability.

The pycsw team announces the release of pycsw 1.4.0.
The 1.4.0 release brings numerous features, enhancements and fixes to the codebase, including:
 * WSGI server support
 * harvesting support for WFS, WCS, WPS, and other CSW endpoints
 * support for Open Data Catalog integration
 * enhanced support for GeoNode 2.0 (GeoNode development branch)
 * support for distutils setup/install, which enables pycsw to be installed as a library
 * support for PyPi
 * support for displaying counts for GetDomain requests based on queryable properties
 * support for requestId request parameter
 * fix GetRecords sortby parameter support for HTTP GET
 * support for W3C XLink 1.1 migration
 * support for Debian and Ubuntu packaging
 * support for sorting GetRecords requests by geometry area
 * support for PostGIS enabled PostgreSQL
This release also marks our migration to GitHub for source code management, issue tracking and wiki.
The full list of enhancements and bug fixes is available at https://github.com/geopython/pycsw/issues?milestone=2&page=1&state=closed
pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python.  pycsw implements clause 10 (HTTP protocol binding (Catalogue Services for 
the Web, CSW)) of the OpenGIS Catalogue Service Implementation Specification, version 2.0.2.
pycsw allows for the publishing and discovery of geospatial metadata.  Existing repositories of geospatial metadata can be exposed via  OGC:CSW 
2.0.2.  pycsw is Open Source, released under an MIT license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).
Source and binary downloads:
----------------------------------------
The source code is available at:
http://pycsw.org/download.html
Testers and developers are welcome.
The pycsw developer team.
http://pycsw.org/

This is my tentative to catch up the geonews since my mid-August holidays. Here they are!

On the open source / open data front:

• UDig 1.3.2 has been released with several new features and supports Axios spatial editing tools again
• Since the USGS provides the Landsat archive, but this entry mentions that a substantial part of the Landsat archive is available on the fast and reliable public Google Earth Engine cloud storage

On the Esri front:

• The free plugin ArcGIS for AutoCAD version 300 is now available
• There's now an ArcGIS Runtime for iOS for ArcGIS WebMaps

On the Google front:

• Google made a few Google Maps announcements, including voice guided directions in India, Map Maker in New Zealand and new Street View in 150 university campuses
• In another entry, Google offers a roundup of their August Google Maps related news, most news we already shared with our users
• Nothing surprising, new imagery released on September 1

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft shares an entry on overlaying Esri shapefiles in BIng Maps
• Microsoft's Global Ortho Project is complete for the United States, meaning there's high resolution 30cm imagery everywhere in the country
• There's a new Bing Get Me There App for iOS for London, UK
• An entry on Bing Maps V7 AJAX Highlights

In the everything else category:

• James shares a must-read short entry named '80% of Data Is Not Spatial So Stop Claiming It Is', read the comments for insights
• Here's a pertinent entry related to a UN paper, Criticism - Future Trends in Geospatial Information Management: The Five to Ten Year Vision
• Here's an update on the OGC standards and the semantic web (aka Linked Data)
• APB informs us that 22 companies formed the In-Location Alliance to Enhance Indoor Positioning
• O'Reilly links to an article on Yelp Checkins to Measure Geopositioning Accuracy Across Phones
• Slashdot discuss the Location Privacy Act Approved By California Legislature
• Other stories at Slashdot, The Rapid Rise of License Plate Readers and UK License Plate Cameras Have "Gaps In Coverage"
• Big numbers, APB indicates that the GIS market will soon reach between 3.7 - 10.6 Billions, depending on who you ask

In the maps category:

• On APoD, there's a pretty interesting map of hurricane and tropical storms paths (screenshot below)
• An interesting map of the Global Decline in Religiosity
• Some London Olympics maps: The politics of London Olympic medal counts

A colleague informed me of the new Open Access 'Geoscience Data Journal', specifically for describing geospatial datasets.

From their aims and scope: "Geoscience Data Journal provides an Open Access platform where scientific data can be formally published, in a way that includes scientific peer-review. Thus the dataset creator attains full credit for their efforts, while also improving the scientific record, providing version control for the community and allowing major datasets to be fully described, cited and discovered. An online-only journal, GDJ publishes short data papers cross-linked to – and citing – datasets that have been deposited in approved data centres and awarded DOIs."

Their content description: "A data article describes a dataset, giving details of its collection, processing, file formats etc., but does not go into detail of any scientific analysis of the dataset or draw conclusions from that data. The data paper should allow the reader to understand the when, why and how the data was collected, and what the data is."

Via the OGD blog I learned about OpenGeoDa, an open source software program that serves as an introduction to spatial data analysis. The initial (closed) version was released in and they claim about 70,000 users. While we mentioned GeoDa before, it's really the first time we share about its existence with our users.

Here's what it is: "It is designed to implement techniques for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) on lattice data (points and polygons). The free program provides a user friendly and graphical interface to methods of descriptive spatial data analysis, such as spatial autocorrelation statistics, as well as basic spatial regression functionality. The latest version contains several new features such as a cartogram, a refined map movie, parallel coordinate plot, 3D visualization, conditional plots (and maps) and spatial regression."